It praises the line
that forms the images, marvellous ornaments to this poetic entertainment.

It’s the voice
that the light made us understand here

That Hermes
Trismegistus writes of in Pimander.

‘Soon’ we read in
the Pimander, ‘they descend into the shadows….and an inarticulate cry rises
from there that seems the voice of light.’

Is not this ‘voice
of light’ the design, that is to say the line?

And where the light
fully expresses all its colour. Painting is truly a luminous language.

From magic Thrace

Orpheus was a
native of Thrace. That sublime poet played on a lyre that Mercury gave him. It
was made from the shell of a tortoise, stuck round with leather, with two horns
and a sounding board and strings made from sheep’s gut. Mercury gave these
lyres to both Apollo and Amphion. When Orpheus played and sang, the wild
animals themselves came to hear his singing. Orpheus invented all the sciences,
all the arts. Grounded in magic he knew the future and predicted the Christian
coming of the Saviour.

My harsh dreams
knew the riding of you

My
gold-charioted fate will be your lovely car

Bellerephon was the
first to ride Pegasus when he attacked the Chimaera. There are many chimaeras
that exist today, and before combating one of them, the greatest enemies of
poetry, it is necessary to bridle Pegasus and even yoke him. One knows well
what I wish to say.

The full form that conceives.

In the lair (the
form) of the female hare superfetation (second conception during
gestation) is possible.

With his four dromedaries

Don Pedro of Alfaroubeira

Travels the world and admires her.

The celebrated
travel book entitled: ‘History of Prince Don Pedro of Portugal, in which is
told what happened to him on the way composed for Gomez of Santistevan when he
had covered the seven regions of the globe, one of the twelve who bore the
prince company’, reports that the Prince of Portugal, Don Pedro of
Alfaroubeira, set out with twelve companions to visit the seven regions of the
world. These travellers were mounted on four dromedaries, and having passed
through Spain, they went to Norway and from there to Babylon and the Holy Land.
The Portuguese prince even visited the Kingdoms of Prester John and returned to
his own country after three years and four months.

And
the palace of Rosamunde.

Here, regarding the
palace, and a testimony of the love that the King of England possessed for his
mistress, is this quatrain from a poem whose Author I do not know.

‘To shelter
Rosamunde from hate

borne her by the
queen,

the king had a
palace made

such as had ne’er
been seen’.

By the flies who are they say

Divinities of snow.

All have not
appeared in the form of snowflakes but many have been tamed by the Finnish or
Lapp sorcerers and obey them. The magicians pass them from father to son and
keep them imprisoned in a box where they are invisible, ready to fly out in a
swarm and torment thieves, sounding out magic words, so they themselves are
immortal.

Here’s the slender grasshopper

The food that fed Saint John.

‘And John was
clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins: and he
did eat locusts and wild honey.’ Mark 1.6

The female of the Halcyon,

Love, the seductive Sirens,

All know the fatal songs

Dangerous
and inhuman.

The sailors,
hearing the female Halycon sing, prepared to die, safe however around mid-December,
when these birds make their nests, and one knows that then the sea will be
calm. Like Love and the Sirens, these birds sing so melodiously that even the
life of those who hear them is not too great a price to pay for such music.

This
cherubim

One may distinguish
among the angelic hierarchies, vowed to the service and glory of the divine,
beings with unknown forms and the most amazing beauty. The cherubim are winged
oxen, but in no way monstrous.

When the good God intends.

Those who practice
poetry search for and love only the perfection that is God Himself. And will
this divine grace, this supreme perfection depart those for whom life exists
only to discover and glorify them? That seems impossible, and, to my mind,
poets have the right to hope after their death for the everlasting happiness
that obtains complete knowledge of God, that is to say of the sublime beauty.